Berlin Game

'He won't swindle you, Tante Lisl. Werner owes you more than he can ever repay, and he knows it. But if he loses your money, there is nothing in writing that will get it back for you.'

'It's something to do with exports,' said Lisl, as if a measure of confession would persuade me to help her.

'I have to come back here,' I said. 'I'll talk to him on my next visit. But you should be more careful with your money, Lisl.'

She blew air through her teeth in a gesture of contempt. 'Careful? We have some of the oldest, biggest, richest corporations in Germany facing bankruptcy and you tell me to be careful. Where am I to invest my savings?'

'I'll do what I can, Lisl.'

'A woman on her own is helpless in these matters, darling.'

'I know, Lisl, I know.' I found myself thinking about Fiona again. I remembered phoning her from Berlin on the previous trip. I'd phoned her three or four times in the middle of the night and got no reply. She said the phone was out of order, but I went on wondering.

Watery sunshine trickled over the Persian carpet and made a golden buttress in the dusty air. Lisl stopped talking to chew her bread roll; the phone rang. It was for me: Frank Harrington. 'Bernard? I'm glad I caught you. I'm sending a car to take you to the airport this afternoon. What time do you want to leave Frau Hennig's? Do you want to stop off anywhere?'

'I've fixed up a car, Frank. Thanks all the same.'

'No, no, no. I insist.'

'I can't cancel it now, Frank.'

There was a pause at the other end before Frank said, 'It was like old times, seeing you again last night.'

'I should have thanked you,' I said, although I had already arranged for Mrs Harrington to receive a bunch of flowers.

'That conversation we had… about you know whom… I hope you won't be putting any of that in writing in London.'

So that was it. 'I'll be discreet, Frank,' I said.

'I know you will, old boy. Well, if you won't let me arrange a car…'

I knew 'the car' would turn out to be Frank, who would 'just happen to be going out that way' and would bend my ear until takeoff time. So I made regret noises and rang off.

'Frank Harrington?' said Lisl. 'Wanting some favour, no doubt.'

'Frank's always been a worrier. You know that.'

'He's not trying to borrow money, is he?'

'I can't imagine him being short of it.'

'He keeps a big house in England and his spectacular place here. He's always entertaining.'

'That's part of the job, Lisl,' I said. I was long since accustomed to Lisl's complaints about the wasteful ways of government servants.

'And the little popsie he's got tucked away in Lübars – is she part of the job too?' Lisl's laugh was more like a splutter of indignation.

'Frank?'

'I get to hear everything, darling. People think I am just a stupid old woman safely locked away up here in my little room, rubbing embrocation on my knees, but I get to hear everything.'

'Frank was in the Army with my father. He must be sixty years old.'

'That's the dangerous age, darling. Didn't you know that? You've got the dangerous sixties to look forward to too, Liebchen.' She spilled coffee trying to get it to her mouth without laughing.

'You've been listening to Werner,' I said.

Her lashes trembled and she fixed me with her steely eyes. 'You think you can get me to tell you where I heard it. I know your little tricks, Bernard.' A waggling finger. 'But it wasn't Werner. And I know all about Frank Harrington, who comes in here looking as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.' She used the equivalent Berlin expression about looking as if he wouldn't dirty a stream, and it seemed so apt for the impeccable Frank and his scrubbed-looking son. 'His wife spends too much time in England, and Frank has found other amusements here in town.'

'You're a fund of information, Tante Lisl,' I said. I kept my voice level to show her that I was not convinced about Frank's double life, and would not be too concerned even if I was convinced.

'A man in his line of business should know better. A man with a mistress in an expensive little house in Liibars is a security risk.'

'I suppose so.'

I thought she was going to change the subject, but she couldn't resist adding, 'And Liibars is so near the Wall… You're damned near the Russkies right up there.'

'I know where Lübars is, Lisl,' I said grumpily.

'Happy birthday, darling,' she said as I reached the door.

'Thanks, Lisl,' I said. She never missed my birthday.

12

From the top of the brightly coloured apartment blocks of Märkisches Viertel, where sixty thousand West Berliners live in what the architects call 'a planned community' and its inhabitants call a 'concrete jungle', you can see across the nearby border, and well into the Eastern Sector.

'Some of them like it here,' said Axel Mauser. 'At least they say they do.' Axel had aged a lot over the last few years. He was three months younger than I was, but his pinched white face and large bald patch, and the way his years at desk and filing cabinet had bowed his head, made him look nearer to fifty than forty. 'They say they like having the shops and the church and the swimming pool and restaurants all built as part of the complex.'

I sipped a little beer and looked around the room. It was a barren place; no books, no pictures, no music, no carpet. Just a TV, a sofa, two armchairs and a coffee table with a vase of plastic flowers. In the corner, newspaper was laid out to protect the floor against oil. On it were the pieces of a dismantled racing bicycle that was being repaired to make a birthday present for his teenage son. 'But you don't?'

'Finish your beer and have another. No, I hate it. We've got twelve schools and fifteen kindergartens here in this complex. Twelve schools! It makes me feel like a damned termite. Some of these kids have never been downtown – they've never seen the Berlin we grew up in.'

'Maybe they are better off without it,' I said.

There was a snap and hiss as he opened a can of Export Pils. 'You're right, Bernd,' he said. 'What will kids find down there hi the middle of the city except crime and dope and misery?' He poured half the can for himself and the other half for me. Axel was like that; he was a sharer.

'Well, you've got a view to beat anything.'

'It's amazing how far you can see on a really clear day. But I'd happily trade the view to be back in that old slum my grandfather had. I keep hearing about the "German miracle", but I don't see any of it. My father gave me a new bicycle for my twelfth birthday. What can I afford to give my eldest son? That damned secondhand one.'

'Kids don't think like that, Axel,' I said. 'Even I can see it's a special racing model. He'll like it all the more because you've worked so hard to get it ready for him.'

Axel Mauser had been one of the brightest kids in the schooclass="underline" top of the class at chemistry and mathematics, and so keen at languages that he used to lend me his bicycle in exchange for English conversation practice. Now he was working in the Polizeipräsidium records office as a senior clerk, and living in this cramped apartment with three children and a wife, who – even on a Saturday – worked in the nearby AEG factory to keep their secondhand BMW running and give them their regular package holiday in Ibiza. 'But where can I afford to move to? Do you know what rents people are paying in Berlin nowadays?'

'Your dad went back to live in the East.'

Axel smiled grimly. 'All because of that bloody fool Binder – Max Binder, remember that Spieler?

Spieler: did he mean actor or gambler, I wondered. Max was a bit of both. 'I always liked Max,' I said.

Axel paused as if about to argue with me but then he went on: 'Max kept writing to Dad saying how much he was enjoying life over there. My dad believed it all. You know what Dad's like. He kept complaining about how it was over thirty years since he'd strolled down Unter den Linden. He'd wonder if he'd meet old friends on the Alexanderplatz – he was always on about that damned "Alex" – and he wanted to see the restoration job that's been done on the cathedral. And he'd get talking to Tante Lisl in that bar of hers when there were no customers in, and they'd be wallowing in nostalgia about seeing President Hindenburg in the Bristol and Lotte Lenya at the Wintergarten…'